Investors had been concerned that RIM's margins could continue to collapse as it offers more sophisticated phones and spends more on marketing to compete with the likes of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. But RIM says margins will improve to 43%-44% this quarter, up from 40% last quarter. On the company's earnings call, it said margins would stay in the low 40% range this fiscal year -- which is much better than the 30% range, for sure.

At the same time, RIM says subscriber growth will also be ahead of expectations. The company expects 3.7 million to 3.9 million net new subscribers this quarter, much better than the 3.0 million that RBC was expecting. RIM ended February with 25 million subscribers, up 3.9 million from the previous quarter.

5:04 Jim B. Pleased to end 80% rev, shipments, etc. RIM launched record new products which outpaced expectations. Number of devices shipped in year almost doubled to 26 million. Demand for products and services reached unprecedented number in Q4.

5:04 Many carriers hitting highest number of net activations ever during the quarter. Aggressive promotion like Verizon buy 1-ge t1 drove outperformance. About 1/3 of BB accounts outside of America. Double digit growth in enterprise. Approx 70% of net new subs came from non-enterprise, now about half of total BB account base.

5:07 Increasing focus on increasing efficiency on opex. Carrier inventory in channel at lowerst levels seen in some time, sell-through is strong. Carriers not replenishing inventory in levels as previous, so volume of shipments lower. Similar to volumes in Q4 despite strong sellthrough. Majority of inventory adjustments beginning to moderate in Q1, response to macro and not BB.

5:08 Storm continues to do well. Strong driver of new customers for BB, clearly opened up new market segment. Now launching in Brazil, India, and multiple carriers in Hong Kong.

5:29 GM guidance: Can you give rough contribution of components? Mix and cost improvements? Rebates and FX elements? What is normalized GMs? Upside or downside? What drove improvements: Biggest piece is cost savings on build of materials, Mix second. Forex not big piece. In terms of normalized, really difficult question. Really hard to have a lot of visibility. Best kind of guess is low 40%s from prepared remarks.

5:31 New products... depends if launch on schedule, what kind of cutover from old to new. Lack of visibility -- difficult to not know how things are going to play out in second half of the year.

5:31 Mike A. from RBC. What inning of "land grab" are we in? Forward margin guidance... think you need to do lower prices, or lower subsidies to sustain land grab? Gross margin... most difficult is turbulence and currency swings in world. The land grab is still there. Our role is as a standard trusted element in the b2b is there. Trying to create more value props to widely deploy them throughout organizations. That's why a lot of activity in unified comm. B2b in deeper penetration but not really a land grab.

5:33 Jim B. I'd say 2 down in 2nd inning of smartphone land grab. Lots more to come in marketing promo stuff too. Mix is going to shift, GM is a function of a lot of factors of play, you know cost and working down the BOM, still a land grab and still lots of variability and turbulence. Very valuable land. Benefits users, benefits developers, and really benefits carriers. Mike A. "Assume you have a strong batter warming up for third inning."

5:35 I think pricing is a function of what's in play. More segmenting in devices, services.

5:51 Risk of customers confused if multiple app stores? I think it's modestly positive -- not a big profit driver, but catalyst. Kind of a precondition. Shocked by adoption, flow of apps and new users has been pleasantly surprising. If carriers have a store, that's an awful lot for a carrier to do. Untenably difficult, inefficient thing for them to do.

Will the slower first quarter -- and RIM's maturing products -- help the company's gross margins improve? Or at least stay level?

RIM's gross margins have fallen to around 40% from more than 50% a year ago, as a result of selling new, more sophisticated phones, and increased marketing spend. Gross margin guidance lower than 40% could send investors running away, while an uptick would be good news.

We're also curious what RIM's management has to say about forthcoming BlackBerry devices; competing with Apple's improved iPhone 3.0 software (due out this summer) and the forthcoming Palm Pre; and the new BlackBerry app platform, which launched yesterday.